Some perspective from Anthony Dion

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24 Season 7 Analysis — Hour 5

Determination and love. Those are the two key driving forces of hour five of 24 season 7. What we see is the determination of several characters to expose evil bring about their own destruction, or at least on the edge of one.

Specifically the determination of Henry Taylor to expose the case of his son’s apparent suicide which he believes was a murder cover-up. His love for his son drives this determination and clouds rational judgement and thinking so that he ignores obvious signs of treachery even amongst those closest to him. Thus he ends the episode paralyzed with the inability to control whether he survives another five minutes.

Then there’s the determination of FBI Agent Renee Walker to clean up what she sees as her mess. Jack Bauer and Tony Almeida escaped FBI custody and she takes full responsibility for it. By doing so, she begins a rogue mission to stop the four man team led by Emmerson and their pursuit to kidnap Prime Minister Mutobo. Again, this blind determination gets the individual into peril. Agent Walker walks alone right into a heavy operation and she gets overtaken. After discovering that she didn’t compromise anymore of their operation, the crew decides to get rid of her at a remote construction site. Her life now lies in the hands of an undercover Jack Bauer.

One last example of determination and love in this episode is displayed by Prime Minister Mutobo and his wife. In the beginning of the episode we find them safely secured in a… safezone for the lack of a better word. As the Emmerson crew searches for ways to drive them out of this safezone, the Prime Minister and his wife become resigned to their fate, they realize that their cause is bigger than themselves. However, as they begin to breath in deadly toxins, Mutobo can’t help watching his wife struggle for her life and simply watches as his wife opens the safehold to their kidnappers. Even though they were going to die, his love for his wife clouded Prime Minister Mutobo’s mind. He failed to realize that by opening up the safehold and giving themselves up they were also sealing their fate at the hands of their enemies — the Emmerson crew and colonel Ike Duboku, who will undoubtedly kill him and his wife anyways but not before painful torture and gathering information that the Prime Minister wants to keep secret.

These forces (determination and love) are always prevalent in an individual’s psyche but they have to be controlled and not left to be simply unbridled.

What we also see in hour five is another 24 plot mainstay when the Attorney General sends an official to inspect the interrogation of a man named Tanner. This man wants to speak to Agent Walker but as she is obviously indisposed at the moment he can’t and makes a stupid situation turn into an annoying problem.

This 24 tendency to create issues where there shouldn’t be any is ridiculous to me. Whether it would happen in real life is debatable. Maybe it would or maybe it wouldn’t. The point is how can anyone be talking about prosecuting a FBI Agent for gathering information in the heat of an on-going investigation that is paramount to a matter of national security while her life is in danger and so is that of thousands of Americans? Wouldn’t the Attorney General and his officials be able to see that? It strikes me as awfully naive.

The episode leaves us hanging as a handcuffed Agent Walker lies in a ditch being buried alive by Bauer and Almeida as Emmerson watches from a distance. Will she be able to breath long enough to survive? How bad is her neck wound (will she bleed to death before she can help herself)? If she is somehow able to get out of the perilous situation, how will she escape being handcuffed and without a cell phone or transportation of any sort?

Then there’s the situation of Henry Taylor and Samantha Roth. The murder suicide set up is engaged but will it be executed as planned? And a intriguing subplot certainly to be delved into deeper in the season, what is this relationship between two FBI agents? How is that going to affect the main plots?